The automotive industry calendar is particularly busy at this time of year. I look forward to the auto shows in Montreal, Toronto and Detroit and industry events like the CADA Summit. For the most part, these events are a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, the recent calendar had one event that I would wish didn’t have to happen. That was the celebration of life for Kathy Ward, who passed away far too soon after a battle with cancer.
The team at the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association (TADA) deserve a lot of credit for making that celebration of life a beautiful event. It was so nice to hear so many personal anecdotes drawn from Kathy’s friends and family. So I thought I’d share one of my own.
I knew Kathy for a long time, working together on a number of different projects.
Not surprisingly, my little story involves two of Kathy’s great passions: golf and the Canadian Black Book Golf Tournament. (Moving forward the tournament will be called The Canadian Black Book Kathy Ward Memorial Golf Tournament — a very nice touch. For 2018, the tournament will be held on September 10th at the Magna Golf Club in Aurora, Ont.)
This was a few years ago. My foursome was finishing up, and there on the final green greeting players as they came in was Kathy.
I had hit onto the green, but I was about as far from the hole as I could be, on a very big green. As I stood over my putt, which was probably a good 70-80 feet (Heck, let’s round it up to 100 ft. for the sake of the story!) Kathy stood at my shoulder pointing out that I might try hitting closer to the pin next time.
Now, a key fact to know in this little story is that Kathy and I share a trait: being very tall. So as I leaned over to take my putt, using my standard length putter, Kathy pointed out how silly I looked. She thought my putter looked like a kid’s club in my hands. She happily made a variety of supportive comments, mostly centred around the fact that I was never going to get the ball to the hole with “that little thing.”
I love golfing, but I am not a great golfer, and a putt that long was not one I would ever expect to hit. If I could get it within five feet of the hole I’d consider it a success. Well, you can see where this is going. With Kathy happily poking fun at me, I hit the putt. We both watched it roll up and down and around the green
for what seemed an age.
Eventually, it crawled up to the hole and dropped in.
I turned to Kathy, who was now nose to nose with me. There was a relatively long silence between us, and then we both burst out laughing. We basically laughed until we were out of breath. Then, with a big wide grin on her face, Kathy simply said “great putter, you should hold onto that.”
I’ll miss getting together with Kathy to talk seriously about the industry, about opportunity, and about entrepreneurship.
I’ll miss getting together to talk much less seriously about people, and how much we enjoyed being part of this business. Like all businesses, it really is all about people.
I am thankful for the many moments we did share. Standing together on a beautiful golf green on a perfect sunny day, laughing as hard as we can, remains my favourite.
